Better, Stronger, Truer
by TheFoxinator
Summary: Wasn't it funny, that the undead loved better, more strongly, and truer than any humans history had ever known? Spike/Drusilla Darla/Angelus Pre-series.


**Disclaimer: Not mine, etc. **

**A/N: A fill at comment_fic for katleept, who prompted: "Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Spike/Dru + any, It was funny, he/she observed, that the undead loved better, more strongly, and truer than any humans history had ever known."**

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Drusilla's slippers have already turned the colour of old wine, slipping on the spilt blood of the dead and dying guests as, under Darla's watchful gaze, the pair of young (relatively speaking, of course) lovers twirls about in the candlelight, weaving deftly in between the pew and the piled bodies.

Darla keeps her arm tight around the bride.

"Maybe we should've kept the band around a bit longer," Spike mutters, only just managing to avoid tripping over one of the bridesmaids as Drusilla's dance shifts and morphs suddenly, once again, and leaves him to catch up.

Dru giggles and sways her way back to him. "Nonesese, my lovely." She slides her hand up his chest, takes hold of his shirt collar. "Can hear it all, still." She spiders her fingers across his jaw, up his temple. "They play so sweetly this way," she hums. Then she spins, abruptly, unpinned hair fanning and slapping Spike across the face. "Can you hear it, Grandmummy?"

"No, Dru," Darla smiles tightly. "I don't. Stop calling me that."

Drusilla continues on, as if she hadn't replied. "My Spike won't let them in." She leans in conspiratorially, despite being several metres away. "He's saving spaces for the soldiers instead," she whispers, finger to her lips. "Shhhh…"

Spike's arms close around Dru's waist, pulling her back against his body. "What soldiers, luv?"

Drusilla smiles, still facing Darla, eyes half-lidded. "Mmm…" she hums over her purring. "Nasty men. All electric. Want to take your sunshine away."

"Well," says Spike, brushing aside his lover's hair to kiss at her throat, "that seems rather nice of 'em."

"Oh? Ohh…" Dru sighs happily, melting back against Spike's body behind her. "Oh, but, Spike, you do love the sunshine."

"I love _you_, baby," Spike corrects. He seizes his sire, turns her around forcefully, to her gasp of delight, and pins her to his body, staring into her eyes.

Drusilla hums, pleased. Her hand slips free of Spike's hold, slides up to capture his face. Darla directs the bride's attention to it.

"Now that," she says, "_that_, is true love." The bride shivers and says nothing.

Angelus would have loved her. She's small, barely taller than Darla and slimmer even than Dru, with hair in blonde ringlets that had fallen in the chaos, and skin so pale and smooth, she could easily have been mistaken for one of their own. Could have been, if not for that heartbeat. Pounding, slamming, drumming there in Darla's ear like music.

Maybe she can hear Dru's tune, after all.

"You humans," Darla sighs. "You go on and on and on about love and passion, but you couldn't even begin to understand true emotion. Devoting yourself to one person for a hundred years." She points to the bridegroom, bled out on a pile of bodies that had, not an hour ago, struggled and writhed to be the first out of the door. "He couldn't even last twenty minutes."

"You humans think you understand romance. You sing and you dance and you write and you _vow _about life and love, but you don't really have a clue what it means to really love someone. Our passion is _eternal._"

The bride makes the first noise she's made since the rest of the guests fell into silence; a shaky little breath that ends in a sob. Darla makes a fist in the tangle of the woman's hair, forces her gaze in the direction of Spike and Dru and their awkwardly constrained waltz. Despite Spike's close encounters with the pews every few steps, the couple seems utterly oblivious to the rest of the world around them, faces close, eyes fluttering closed, lips curved in dreamy smiles.

They carried on, content with only themselves. Never mind the bodies piled high around them, or the frightened woman left untouched. Never mind the demon hunters they'd barely managed to escape but a week earlier, or the letters they'd received from The Master, summoning them to the Hellmouth.

Never mind the one who really, truly should be there with them now. Enjoying the slaughter, laughing at the women's screams and men's cries.

Never mind the big, gaping hole left in all three of them.

"We're dead, and yet we love better, more strongly, and truer than any human history has ever known." Darla tilts her head, studying, thinking, and allows her hand to drop back to the bride's shoulder. "Isn't that funny?"

The bride squeaks, reddened eyes wide. She trembles as Darla's finger travels dangerously close to her left eye, but the vampire only unsticks a loose curl from her puffy, tear-stained cheek. She considers the bride, lips puckered, eyes thoughtful.

"Maybe you're the ones with the right idea after all, though," Darla concedes.

Before the confusion can fully form in the bride's eyes, her neck snaps audibly and she slumps over sideways. Darla rises away from the altar. At the bottom of the steps, Drusilla has swayed her way apart from Spike and waits, hands outstretched.

Darla accepts the younger vampire's hand and, as she moves to lead them out of the church, Drusilla leans in close, conspiratorially. She holds a gloved finger, blood-stained, to her lips and whispers in Darla's ear; "_We _love you, Grandmummy."

Darla sighs, whisper soft, and gives consideration to the two pairs of eyes on her. Yes, she can see it there, the love, the eternity. But it's all blue. It's what she wants, but it isn't where she wants it.

She lets go of Dru's hand and slips her arm around the other vampire's waist. "I know, dear," she assures her, fixing an ill-placed rumple in Drusilla's skirt, to the seer's hum of delight. She looks up and glances back over to Spike, looks him in those eyes she doesn't want to be seeing at the moment. "Let's go burn things."


End file.
